If you see something you like or need, you better snatch it up now, before it’s gone or not available for delivery sometime in 2023.

That’s the hard truth 40-year veteran Gerry Beard at Beard Implement Co. in Arenzville, Ill., is delivering to his customers.

Beard told the Edwardsville Intelligencer just before Christmas that he could be making a lot more sales as farmers try to reinvest anticipated earnings into machinery. But supply chain issues have him stymied.

“It’s planters. It’s tillage tools. It’s combines. It’s tractors," he said. "I don’t think there is a favorite. They seem to pick on all of them [equipment]."

Because so many employees and rural businesses worked throughout the pandemic, "I was naive, thinking they (farm equipment manufacturers) were working ... making these products. But they just weren’t," Beard said.

It takes a lot of planning to sell product 9-12 months in advance, but 2 years takes a lot of dealers and their customers to get used to.

"It’s just everybody," Beard said. "It’s Case IH. It’s Kinze, It’s Great Plains. It’s Kubota. It’s New Holland. It’s Westfield Augers. Bush Shredders. They all are battling the same issue: Getting products.”

Yet he encourages employees and dealers to stay positive. In 2013, 2014 and 2015, a drop in commodity prices left Beard and other farm equipment dealers with lots filled with used equipment and nobody to sell it to.

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